Feb. 17-18
- Cairo’s pyramid fail
- Paris bouquinistes vs. Olympics
- Temperature-sensitive prosthetics
- … and much more.
🎲 OUR WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ
1. In retaliation to rockets fired by what militant group has Israel launched deadly airstrikes in Lebanon?
2. Moscow has put Kaja Kallas on its “wanted” list over her alleged “desecration of historical memory.” She is the prime minister of which country?
3. The United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Brazil have announced their intention to form a “troika” that aims to combat what?
4. Which music icon is auctioning off hundreds of items from their Atlanta home, worth an estimated $10 million? Taylor Swift / Elton John / Lady Gaga / Kanye West
[Answers at the bottom of this newsletter]
#️⃣ TRENDING
An undercover officer in Lima, Peru, dressed as a teddy bear and equipped with a box of chocolate, arrested a suspected drug dealer on Valentine’s Day. Footage released by the police shows the woman being lured to the street by the undercover cop before being apprehended. Officers reportedly found more than 1,000 packages of cocaine paste in her apartment.
🎭 5 CULTURE THINGS TO KNOW
• Amsterdam museum boss makes plea for return of stolen painting: The director general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has called for the return of Two Laughing Boys With a Mug of Beer, a stolen Frans Hals painting, ahead of a major exhibition dedicated to the Dutch master. The €15 million work of art was stolen from the Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden in August 2020 and was never recovered.
• France cancels plan to relocate Paris’s riverside booksellers during Olympics: French President Emmanuel Macron said that the bouquinistes (i.e. Paris’s iconic booksellers on the banks of the Seine river) will be allowed to stay at their historic locations during the opening ceremony of the upcoming Summer Games, following a row over their temporary removal. For the first time in modern Games history, the ceremony will not take place in a stadium but outside, along the Seine River.
• Blackpink’s Lisa joins new White Lotus cast: Blackpink star Lisa is set to join the cast of the season 3 of award-winning show The White Lotus, which will start production in Thailand, the K-pop singer’s homeland, later this month. The HBO series role will mark Lisa’s acting debut.
• Back in Black in Europe: AC/DC has announced its return to Europe for the first time in eight years with its POWER UP tour, which will start in Germany on May 17 and end in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 17. The legendary Australian rock band will include two new members in the live line-up.
• Swiss village to host the world's tallest 3D-printed tower: The remote Swiss village of Mulegns will welcome in June a 30-meter high 3D-printed tower that is expected to be the world’s tallest. It is part of efforts to revive the declining villages of the Julier Pass, once an important passage between Northern and Southern Europe. Printing of the “Tor Alva” tower, which will be able to welcome 45 visitors and feature a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains, started this month.
✍️ Some tips on work ethics, courtesy of the Brothers Grimm
The 19th-century publishers of classic fairy tales such as Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel were also renowned academics who established a way of working that offers important lessons for the modern world. These include the key to successful teamwork to the best method to take notes when reading. For example, “You should mark the important text with a pencil dot so it is easily erasable and note down the relevant page number. The work of writing out the interesting passages should be saved for later, when you are too tired for more demanding intellectual work,” writes Matthias Heine in German daily Die Welt.
Read the full story: Beyond Fairy Tales: How The Brothers Grimm Invented A Work Ethic For The Modern World
💏 The chemical and mental benefits of the quickie
In the era of tight scheduling — from work appointments to romantic dates to pictures to upload on social media — true satisfaction lies in the magic of the unexpected, sexually speaking. In Italian independent online newspaper Frammenti Rivista, Anto D'Eri Viesti explains why a quickie is actually a chemical and mental balance problem solver that “allows a state of harmony with ourselves and our surroundings that few other practices give in such an immediate, simple and pleasant way.”
Read the full story: From Italy, A Valentine's Day Ode To The Quickie
🇪🇬 That escalated quickly! Inside the backlash against Egypt’s pyramid restoration project
A project to restore the facade of the smaller of three Pyramids of Giza triggered intense criticism from experts and sarcasm on social media, with Egyptologists blasting the move. One user captured the nature of the reaction, posting a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, with the quip: “The project to restore the Tower of Pisa to its existing state!” The backlash prompted authorities to freeze the project, but for Makarios Lahzy, writing for Arabic-language independent digital media Daraj, it reflects the public’s deep mistrust in the government in handling the country’s heritage.
Read the full story: Behind The Rise And Fall Of Egypt’s Pyramid "Project Of The Century"
💪🌡 BRIGHT IDEA
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne have developed a device that allows individuals with amputations to feel hot or cold sensations through their artificial limbs. The device, named MiniTouch, uses temperature sensors to send signals to a temperature controller on the user's prosthetic arm to reproduce temperatures ranging from 20 °C to 40 °C. MiniTouch is inexpensive, requires no surgery and can be easily affixed to existing artificial limbs, the researchers say.
🇬🇷🏳️🌈 SMILE OF THE WEEK
Scenes of joy erupted in front of the Hellenic Parliament in Athens as Greece legalized same-sex marriage this week. The nation became the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to do so, despite strong resistance from the Church. It joins 15 European Union members and 35 countries worldwide that have legalized same-sex marriage. For more, check our LGBTQ Plus coverage.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
⏩ LOOKING AHEAD
• Mike Gallaher, head of the U.S. House China committee, is set to visit Taipei next week with a group of lawmakers in support of President-elect Lai Ching Te a month before his inauguration. Washington has warned China not to engage in any aggressive actions against Taiwan following Lai’s succession of Tsai Ing-wen as president. China has since replied with its long standing criticism that the U.S. should not meddle in Taiwan.
• London judges will decide next week if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited to the United States. The two-day court hearing is set to take place Tuesday and Wednesday, Assange request to attend in person for the hearing has not yet been approved. Assange is facing life imprisonment after publishing thousands of U.S. classified documents in 2010.
• U.S. private company, Intuitive Machine, is attempting to land on the moon next week. If all goes well, the lander will touchdown on the Moon on Feb. 22. NASA is the main sponsor of the mission, paying $118 million to Intuitive machine to get its latest set of experiments on the Moon.
👓 WORLDCRUNCH MAGAZINE
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News quiz answers:
1. In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes killed 10 civilians, leading to escalating tensions with Hezbollah. The strikes, which occurred on Wednesday near the city of Nabatiyeh, followed an earlier attack from Lebanon that killed an Israeli soldier and injured eight others. This marked the deadliest day in more than four months of cross-border exchanges between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.
2. Russian police have put Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas on the Interior Ministry’s register of people wanted in connection with criminal charges. It is the first time the Russian ministry has put a foreign leader on a wanted list. Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service warned that Moscow is preparing for a military confrontation with the West within the next decade.
3. Past and future UN climate summit hosts the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Brazil announced on Tuesday they will form a “troika” aiming at pushing for an international agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.
4. Some of Elton John's prized belongings (900 items of clothing, art, and cars worth an estimated $10 million) are being auctioned off at Christie's New York until Feb. 21. Having resided in his Atlanta penthouse for 30 years, the iconic British singer is parting ways with both the property and its contents.
✍️ Newsletter by Worldcrunch
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*Photo: Hansmeyer/Dillenburger